Posted
by
msmash
on Saturday July 22, 2017 @03:00AM
from the pen-is-mightier dept.

An anonymous reader writes: A British magazine is directing readers to copyright-infringing software, the Federation Against Copyright Theft (Fact) has said. Kodi is a free, legal media player for computers -- but software add-ons can make it possible to download pirated content. The Complete Guide to Kodi magazine instructs readers on how to download such add-ons. Dennis Publishing has not yet responded to a BBC request for comment. The magazine is available at a number of retailers including WH Smith, Waterstones and Amazon. It was spotted on sale by cyber-security researcher Kevin Beaumont. It repeatedly warns readers of the dangers of accessing pirated content online, but one article lists a series of software packages alongside screenshots promoting "free TV", "popular albums" and "world sport". "Check before you stream and use them at your own risk," the guide says, before adding that readers should stay "on the right side of the law."

Leave Kodi alone. It's bad enough Netflix and other legal streaming services won't develop an add-on for the media player, but now you attack a piece of software because add-on developers, (NOT CORE), made something which CAN stream pirated content?

Kodi's origins were in piracy, more or less. It was built from a pirated xbox SDK, distributed on thepiratebay, and didn't observe the GPL licensed mplayer that it was based on by not releasing the source.

The funny thing is, Slashdot now directs Readers to a Magazine that directs Readers to Pirate Content. I had never heard of "The Complete Guide to Kodi" magazine until now.msmash/manishs, have you no shame?

Um, well one could genuinely ask why does a spreadsheet need such levels of scripting complexity that something like this is possible in the first place? Nothing to do with the current vibe of the conversation though but one could criticize M$ none the less.

M$ is a valid name for a string in older versions of the BASIC programming language. It's sometimes used as a nickname for Microsoft, which got its start as a publisher of BASIC interpreters for 8-bit home computers.

Microsoft Windows is a legal operating system you can run on your PC, but it is possible to install add-ons which permit the user to download pirated content. Indeed Microsoft Windows is the most popular platform amongst software and media pirates. In addition, Microsoft does essentially nothing to prevent its operating system being used for piracy.

The difference is that Windows is usually used for non-piracy related reasons. Meanwhile, there is just about zero reason to use Kodi for non-piracy related reasons.

It's like bittorrent, or SNES emulators...sure people can use it for Linux distributions or their self-transferred SNES game files, but realistically they are both 99.9% used for piracy, and everybody knows it, and anybody who claims otherwise is being disingenuous because they want to make a point.

Is there anything illegal about streaming content? Pretty much every case I've seen has centred around uploading or making available (the downside of torrenting). On a purely download / streaming basis has anyone actually ever been found guilty of copyright infringement?

The law was unclear until recently. The Digital Economy Act was passed in April. It's one of those grab-bag laws which ended up covering a wide manner of essentially unrelated matters because so many MPs saw it as a chance to tack on their own amendments - it's got provisions relating to internet pornography, bulk purchasing of event tickets, subtitling requirements, contracted workers and a lot of other stuff. Burried in among all that is the section which clarifies that streaming copy

I don 't know about any blacklist, but if it were to happen then the plugins would become the name-your-own-plugin plugins. Good luck blacklisting that sort of scenario.

Kodi needs to deal with the fact that its not like those other media kits. Those other kits are locked down at least reasonably well. Kodi can never be locked down without becoming just like all the other media kits, and you can be sure it will then easily lose the locked-down competition to the already established players.

There's always going to be some degree of sharing (that they want to demonize as 'piracy') no matter how draconian they get about it, and beyond a certain point it makes no sense to squeeze any tighter. Keep in mind that these people are of a mindset such that they get all anxious at the thought that someone might pay a rental fee for ONE copy of a movie, yet invite TEN or TWENTY people over to watch it, and they're not paying.

Privacy is gone. Say goodbye to it. ISPs will officially track "every link you click, every move you make". So, at this point, it is time to make lemonade from lemons and delegate content payment distribution on ISPs: we pay a fixed ISP fee we are paying now, no more, ISP determines the content we are watching and distributes the correponding portion to content owners.